This baby app helped me work out why my baby wasn't sleeping and gave me back a good night's sleep.

As a first-time mum who was so sleep deprived I once actually forgot what suburb I lived in, writing down when my daughter fed, slept and did number ones and twos was something I clung to.

Unfortunately for the trees and the tidiness of my house, my notes were not recorded digitally, but all written on scraps of paper. There were sums figuring out when the next feed was due. There was weird coding about which boob I had to breastfeed from next. I wrote down numbers resembling algebra with how much formula my daughter drank when my boobs decided to pack up and go on holiday. There were scribbles of when she did a number two and how long she let me sleep for.

It might have looked like I was organised, or trying to maintain some kind of control in all the chaos among the notes us parents need for the many medical visits. The community nurse who came over drilling me on how much my baby was feeding and how much weight she had put on since leaving the hospital; the doctor and paediatrician wanting to know the same information.

It would have been so much easier for me to turn up to all those appointments with just my phone instead of my seemingly infinite amounts of paper scraps.

While I don’t track my daughter’s eating, toileting and sleeping habits that much, I was lucky enough to find out about TerryWhite Chemmart’s Baby Diaries app at the time I did. My daughter, the perfect sleeper (please don’t hate me), suddenly decided that sleep is something to fight.

After I had read all the advice humanly possible on Google, I decided to track what she did during the day, and how much sleep she actually got. Maybe my expectations were too high? Maybe I was doing something during the day that kept her up at night? There had to be a reason and a way to get my perfect sleeper back.

I downloaded the app, loaded an adorably cute photo on her profile and started filling in my daughter's habits each day. Here's my three-day diary of using The Baby Diaries:

Day one.

It’s lunch time and I've totally forgotten to update the app until now because my daughter woke up ridiculously early and has been a cranky little munchkin since. Not a problem - I can easily input things that have happened earlier, like the yoghurt that half ended up on the floor for breakfast (thank goodness we have dogs), or the ginormous number one that was in her nappy at 5am. She barely ate much lunch, which may have been down to all the biscuits she demanded at morning tea. She took about 20 minutes to fall asleep at lunch time, being a real sook, clearly overtired (which I logged in the app).

It's a little later in the day now. She slept two hours for her day sleep (winning) and was super happy in the afternoon. She drew this lovely drawing (multi-coloured scribbles) that I took a photo of, so I am going to upload it into the app under the "milestones" section to remember that she can be adorably cute. Had all her dinner (clearly L-O-V-E-S pasta) and took 30 minutes to fall asleep…maybe I was totally overreacting about her sleep.

Day two.

I spoke too soon. During the night, she woke every two hours upset, but bunny and a sip of water calmed her down. Still… every two hours?

As the day went on, I logged that she happily ate her whole avocado sandwich for lunch. It all was smooth sailing until dessert – she had a little cry over the sliced apples

This afternoon she’s back to being a cranky little bum and her temp is 37.5 degrees, which is nothing really to worry about but I log it in the app just in case.

During her bath, she keeps tugging on her ear and chewing on the bath toy. Maybe teething? Please not an ear infection, please. I give her some medication and log it in the app so I can easily remember when her next dose is, if she needs it.

Day three.

IT WAS TEETHING. The medication must have helped to take the edge off the pain. She slept straight through the night and woke up at 6am (still early, but liveable). In the fog of tiredness, I haven't seen the signs. But when I look back at my diary entries on the app, it’s so obvious: there was the mild temperature, the crankiness, the chewing on everything to find relief. This week, she's been loving soft food like avocado on soft bread, but hating things like apples. And now, I can even see the red gums where the tooth is starting to come out.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to record giving her any more medicine, but I’ve found so many other cool features in my experience with The Baby Diaries app, like relevant product deals and promotions happening at TerryWhite Chemmart. I also found a section to track her height and weight (which I am always fumbling over when I go to the doctor when’s she sick).

And I'm absolutely in love with the milestone part of the app, because it lets me put all the cute little things she does in one spot (and there’s even a feature to share it with my family so there aren’t a million text messages flying around). You can even use the same app for multiple kids.

Note to future self: remember to use The Baby Diaries app for the next child, from birth. Oh, how much simpler my life would have been if I’d known about this wonderful little creation when my (now toddler) daughter was born!

Have you used The Baby Diaries? How do you track your bub's milestones? Tell us below.

This content was created with thanks to our brand partner TerryWhite Chemmart.